Social Encounter Rules

Rule changes and additions for this game.
Post Reply
User avatar
SavageBob
Jedi Initiate
Posts: 3913
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2017 1:27 am
Location: Virginia

Social Encounter Rules

#1

Post by SavageBob » Tue Sep 04, 2018 1:05 am

In this game, social encounters are likely to come up just as often or more than combat encounters. For low-level, one-off rolls, social encounters work as they do in Star Wars. Threatening a Hutt's lackey so he doesn't put that picture of you on the holonet? Lying to the bouncer that you know the DJ so he'll let you into the club? These are standard, one-off rolls versus the target's opposing skill.

But Genesys elaborates on some of the suggestions from Desperate Allies and Far Horizons to allow for more fully fleshed-out social encounters during plot-critical moments. In these more elaborate encounters, the PCs and NPCs take turns targeting one another with social skill checks; each character gets one action and one maneuver. There's no initiative order, but instead, narrative logic governs when any one character can act. All social skills are fair game, and they are opposed as in Star Wars, except that Deception is resisted by Vigilance rather than Discipline. Failed attempts at influence cause 2 Strain to the person making the attempt.

There's a chart of suggestions for spending Advantages, Triumphs, Threats, and Despairs in these social scenes. One of the big things you can do with advantages is discover one of your antagonists' Motivations; if you then appeal to these in dealing with him or her, you get boosts.

In these more elaborate social encounters, the goal is to whittle away at your opponent's Strain Threshold while they target yours. Getting them to half Strain means they may be open to compromise on whatever is being debated, while 0 Strain means they capitulate completely. You can come up with a "Critical Remark" for a Triumph or 4 Advantage; this does 5 Strain to the target.

Performances

Where Genesys doesn't provide much guidance is for how to model a concert or performance. So the first big change I'm introducing is the idea that many more skills can be designated as social skills in performance scenes. Thus, Knowledge (Lore) might be used to play an exotic horn, while Coordination might be used to dance. In these cases, the default opposing skill is Discipline. Thus, if a dancer wants to impress a client with a jig, she rolls Coordination versus Discipline. Other social skills used for performance are resisted as normal (e.g., Leadership versus Discipline).

For larger-scale performances, Genesys provides a chart of difficulties for influencing a crowd: 2-5 individuals (PP), 6-15 individuals (PPP), 16-50 individuals (PPPP), and 51+ individuals (PPPPP). But what if this crowd is an audience for a performance? A single-resolution, one-time roll doesn't allow for the drama of music-related fiction, so some other ideas need to be introduced.

Option A

One idea is to preserve this general crowd difficulty, but allow the PCs to skew things in their favor. For instance, pre-performance success in stage design, advertising, finding a good opening act, generating good word of mouth, etc. give significant boost dice to the difficulty of the check to win the crowd over (and thus put on a good performance). Likewise, during the actual performance, the backup performers each get a chance to roll their performance skill versus a difficulty of their choosing; if they succeed, they grant the lead performer a boost die per level of difficulty (+1 boost if they succeed a P check, +2 if they succeed at PP, etc.). The lead performer then rolls the check to see if the audience has been won over in general as per the chart in the Genesys CRB.

Option B

The other option is to divide the audience into groups of Minions, Rivals, and perhaps Nemeses. Each PC takes a turn rolling their performance skill and targeting a group of audience members. E.g., "I roll Athletics for the drums, hoping it gets the teenagers on the front row bopping their heads." These groups each have Strain thresholds that get whittled away until they let themselves get caught up in the music when they reach 0 Strain.

The advantage of this system is that it much more closely mimics the standard Star Wars/Genesys combat system, just using social skills. The disadvantage is that it may become unwieldy to track so many individual groups with individual Strain Thresholds, especially in large concerts. But perhaps it would work if the minion groups were large (10+ individuals), and they didn't have Discipline as a group skill in most cases.

There may be other ways to model a performance, or the answer may be to use elements from both proposal above. I'm definitely open to suggestions! Just keep in mind that performance scenes won't be the only type of encounter; the game will include regular social encounters, investigation, combat as much as the PCs want it, and other skill challenges.

Option C

In this system, the crowd has a single Strain Threshold depending on its size. The PCs whittle away at this with individual performance-skill checks and have a limited number of attempts to get it to 0 and thus win the crowd over. Optionally, big-name NPCs in the crowd may have their own Strain Thresholds and must be won over individually. This is sort of a hybrid of the other two options.

User avatar
SavageBob
Jedi Initiate
Posts: 3913
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2017 1:27 am
Location: Virginia

Re: Social Encounter Rules

#2

Post by SavageBob » Thu Oct 11, 2018 2:07 am

Spending Good Stuff in Social Encounters.png
Spending Good Stuff in Social Encounters.png (212.44 KiB) Viewed 683 times
Spending bad stuff in social encounters.png
Spending bad stuff in social encounters.png (180.12 KiB) Viewed 683 times

Post Reply

Return to “House Rules”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest